The Service Level Management (SLM) process is responsible for ensuring Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and underpinning Operational Level Agreements (OLAs) or contracts are met, and for ensuring that any adverse impact on service quality are kept to a minimum. The process involves assessing the impact of Changes upon service quality and SLAs, both when Changes are proposed and after they have been implemented. Some of the most important targets set in the SLAs will relate to service availability and thus require Incident resolution within agreed periods.

SLM is the hinge for Service Support and Service Delivery. It cannot function in isolation as it relies on the existence and effective working of other processes. An SLA without underpinning support processes is useless, as there is no basis for agreeing its content.